Baked Stuffed Portabello

I came home at 9 pm last night, starving after a workout. Looked in the fridge for something hearty that I could make QUICKLY. I found the following ingredients:

2 large portabello mushrooms (about 4-5″ diameter)

1/4 rotisserie chicken

Shredded Italian cheese

Avocado

I preheated my toaster oven to 425 while prepping: Took off the stems and removed the gills from the mushroom (I use a grapefruit spoon to scrape these out). I drizzled olive oil over the inside of the mushrooms, and shredded the chicken into the mushroom cavity. Sliced up one whole avocado over the chicken (1/2 avocado on each mushroom). Topped with cheese. I will admit I used a lot – probably 2 oz. per mushroom, but you could use less. Baked for 8-10 minutes, until cheese is browning. Freshly ground cracked pepper on top.

This was SO EASY and FAST.

Next time I would do one or two things differently. I would turn the mushroom upside down and bake it for 5 minutes before stuffing it. Oddly, one of the two mushrooms (both identical size and thickness) was perfectly tender, but the other one could have used more cooking. If I had pesto sauce handy, I might toss the chicken in the pesto, add some chopped sun-dried tomatoes, then the cheese. Might omit the avocado if I had other interesting ingredients.

Basically, this is an open-faced grilled sandwich, but with mushroom instead of bread. The mushrooms and avocado are full of minerals that are a great replenishment after a workout, so it turns out this was an ideal healthy snack. Just random stuff from the fridge!